Zimmerman on Willow Creek (a guest post)

As soon as I read this article on Out of Ur, I was eager to hear what Barry Zimmerman would say about it. Barry always has a provacative take, and I recall him saying the same things that it took Willow Creek years of research to discover. Barry graciously agreed to post his thoughts on that article here.

Willow Creek has released the results of a multi-year study on the effectiveness of their programs and philosophy of ministry and their Pastor Bill Hybels himself has called the results "ground breaking," "earth shaking" and "mind blowing."

Here are some more of Hybles comments:

"Some of the stuff that we have put millions of dollars into thinking it would really help our people grow and develop spiritually, when the data actually came back it wasn't helping people that much. Other things that we didn't put that much money into and didn't put much staff against is stuff our people are crying out for. We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their Bible between services, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own."

I want to start by saying I truly believe Hybels and the whole "seeker-sensitive" movement had great intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions without good theology and biblical practices can produce, as evidenced here, unintentional results.

The key to the "seeker-sensitive" failures is found in Hybels statement "…we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become 'self feeders.' So my follow up question is, "Why didn't you?" I think it's because they found it took much less effort to build a church than to disciple Christians and fell into the trap of following the route of least resistance.

I remember speaking with a full-time worship minister at a congregation of about 250 about how he fills his time seeing as my responsibilities in a congregation of 350 include worship and it only takes up about 40% of my week’s efforts. After hearing about the amount of time he spent preparing videos, special effects, slideshows, musical numbers, "creative" experiences, etc. I asked how his congregation's efforts at education and small groups were going. The answer? "We'll we had to cancel Sunday School to do our second service and we're hoping to get small groups going."

A question I have often asked people in large, quickly growing churches, that have added more services at the expense of education and small groups is, "If I could guarantee you deeper spiritual growth and a great small group ministry would you be willing to cancel one or more of your services and or risk slowing your growth?" I've yet to find someone in this situation who will simply answer, "Yes." Most simply state they want to do both yet have been unable to give an objective concrete example of a church that has accomplished that. Ironically, they've often tried to use Willow Creek as their example.

I believe what happened was that as seeker-sensitive methods were put into place, crowds were drawn in numbers not seen in years. And the inevitable question was asked, "How do we keep this going?" It's exciting to see more and more new faces, seeing a building fill to capacity, adding services, adding new programs, and having a community talk about your church. The staff that is seen as being a part of the process is seen as successful in the eyes of their peers. I know as our congregation has experienced some of the most explosive growth in its history the first question that tends to get asked is, "How do we keep this going?" It's the wrong question. It's also a possibly spiritually crippling question.

How do you keep it going? Well as far as I've seen churches try, you eliminate programs that aren't drawing big numbers for programs that do. You eliminate Sunday School and you add Worship Services. You get rid of small home groups and you add "felt need" seminars. You wait on hiring that Christian Ed staff member and you add a Worship minister and build a bigger sanctuary. You spend 95% of your time planning services and try to get small groups going with the remaining 5%. You go for the things that "keep it going" bigger and faster. The result? You keep numerical growth going at the expense of the spiritual growth of a large number of individuals.

I believe the more vital question to ask as a congregation begins to grow numerically, no matter the methods, is, "How do we disciple all these new faces?" To answer that question we need to emphasize and put more resources into beefing up our educational and small group ministries. We need to take time to purposely get these people into community. We need staff that are willing to invest their time into individuals even at the perceived expense to the crowd. We need people as committed to developing solid theology as to attending this years Christmas show. We need to understand it's most likely lives will truly be changed by an extra 40 hours poured into small group planning than getting the right video and logos together for the next sermon series.

The problem is this most likely won't happen at the same rate as you can gather a crowd or draw as much attention and accolades. The answers to this question won't get your church as much attention. The answers to the question might necessitate taking same resources, both financial and staff/time, from your "big draw" programs and into things like teacher training, new member assimilation, and mentoring. It might mean that 3 rd Sunday Service that draws 300 people may need to be replaced by an education time that only draws 100 at first. It might mean that in order to disciple well your growth rate dips.

Jesus understood if the Church was going to make it into the future He needed to focus on discipling a small group even at the expense of a bigger crowd. It wasn't the crowd that was destined to carry the torch but a handful of committed and well taught disciples. It was this small group that was key to 3000 coming forward at the first Church service not the 5000 that had been fed on the hillside.

So when it is all said and done it is not the seeker-sensitive mindset that has failed. It is a definite proven tool to draw people in. It was the question that was asked afterward that led to failure. It's time to realize that disicpling these seekers is as important, if not more important, than simply adding them to our numbers. There is a need for a more holistic view of what successful growth looks like. As Willow Creek has shown, the world will not be changed by church goers, so it's time to get back to the slow hard work of going and discipling and teaching.

After all, that is what we've been commissioned to do.